Larry Crowne,Transformers: Dark of the Moon

 Larry Crowne

Until he was downsized, affable, amiable Larry Crowne Tom Hanks was a superstar team leader at the big box company where he's worked since his time in the Navy. Underwater on his mortgage and unclear on what to do with his suddenly free days, Larry heads to his local college to start over. in his public speaking class, Larry develops an unexpected crush on his teacher. Tom Hanks may not be America's finest screen actor, but he's got statuettes that say otherwise. When he won his back to back Best Actor Oscars in 1994 and 1995 for "Philadelphia" and "Forrest Gump", respectively, he became the first actor to do so since Spencer Tracy in 1937 and 1938, who was always considered the gold standard of classic Hollywood. Mr. Hanks has been compared repeatedly to James Stewart over the course of his three decade career. He's a distant relative of Abraham Lincoln's mother; he fought long and hard to get a World War II memorial built on the Mall in Washington, D.C. if he were running for something, it would be National Treasure.

But as difficult as it is to dislike Mr. Hanks, it takes no effort to all to develop an aversion toward "Larry Crowne," the alleged comedy being perpetrated today by Mr. Hanks, his director, Mr. Hanks, his producer, Mr. Hanks; and the co writer, Mr. Hanks. It is a distinctly painful experience: On one level, the story pushes all the Recession Era buttons Larry,Mr. Hanks has been laid off from his manager's job at a Wal Mart style budget store because he never went to college, and he never went to college because he joined the Navy. That the film opens the same week as Transformers: Dark of the Moon could only have been a marketing calculation, Larry being intended as the perfect counterprogramming to Hollywood's most callous exercise in soulless commerce.

But so little effort has been exerted toward making Larry Crowne more than a class warfare cartoon that the film generates its own sense of cynicism and the distinct sense that Larry Crowne is simply a sop to certain disgruntled theatergoers. Some may see it as a movie that strives to restore emotional warmth and simple human values to a medium that could certainly use a little more of both. But unlike the freshly matriculated Larry himself, Larry Crowne gets a flunking grade in every discipline.

Reuniting Mr. Hanks and Julia Roberts for the first time since the grossly underappreciated Charlie Wilson's War, this is the first feature film directed by Mr. Hanks since That Thing You Do! 1996 and establishes Larry immediately as the quintessential U.S. worker: He's enthusiastic, hardworking, honest, cheerful and, we have to guess, trustworthy, brave, clean and reverent. He's the antithesis of the very corporatized ethos that cuts him loose so brutally and nonsensically since his educational shortcomings mean he can't advance in the company, he must therefore be let go. It turns out to be a blessing, of course: Larry goes to community college, where he's introduced to modern America, the comic basso profundo of his weirdly disassociated economics professor Dr. Matsutani Star Trek" vet George Takei and Mercedes Tainot Ms. Roberts, a leggy professor so weary and disillusioned she seems capable of extinguishing the spark of even the most eager, knowledge hungry student. But not, of course, Larry Crowne.

The script by Mr. Hanks and Nia Vardalos My Big Fat Greek Wedding is one of those wonders of the cinema: You wonder who thought any of this was funny. The fractious scenes between Mercedes and her stay at home husband Bryan Cranston are painful, although they do give Larry the opportunity to provide a romantic palliative. Larry's adoption by a group of younger students all of whom ride eco friendly motor scooters is cloyingly, comically clueless; Gugu Mbatha Raw, who plays Larry's style tutor, Talia, is positively adorable, but as directed by Mr. Hanks seems to be auditioning for her own Disney Channel program. The direction is generally awkward and given the coarsely written role Ms. Roberts is assigned to play, the burden of charm is placed squarely on Mr. Hanks well intentioned but sagging shoulders. Even a national monument will collapse under too much pressure.

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON

 The Autobots learn of a Cybertronian spacecraft hidden on the Moon, and race against the Decepticons to reach it and learn its secrets, which could turn the tide in the Transformers. Transformers: Dark of the Moon is better than 2009's infamous Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a futile declaration best left for mathematicians to ponder, as only they might care to take the time to calculate the minuscule percentage that was necessary for this to emerge, uh, superior to its predecessor. 2007's Transformers contained enough flashes of warmth, emotion and workable humor to catch many critics off guard, but all that goodwill dissipated with the release of the first sequel, which one scribe  oh, yeah, me described as the filmic equivalent of a 150 minute waterboarding session. This latest franchise filler is just as soulless, cynical and stupid and five minutes longer!, with director Michael Bay no longer even pretending to care about anything but breaking his own box office records.

Featuring the summer's second rewriting of U.S. history the concept was better handled with X Men: First Class's Cuban Missile Crisis episode, this film reveals that the real reason the astronauts landed on the moon back in 1969 was to check out an alien construct  that turned out to be tied into the long running intergalactic battle between the Autobots good Transformers and Decepticons bad Transformers. After much exposition culminating in a sellout appearance by Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the plot carries us to the present day, where the nerdy Sam Witwicky ,Shia LaBeouf again has an only in the movies supermodel esque girlfriend, Carly,played by Victoria's Secret supermodel Rosie Huntington Whiteley, replacing Megan Fox as the requisite sex object.

Sam's mother, Julie White, disturbingly surmises that her son must have a big schlong in order to land such hot girlfriends, while his father,Kevin Dunn is concerned that he has no job. He finally acquires one, working for an eccentric CEO ,John Malkovich, Carly, meanwhile, is employed by a wealthy slug Patrick Dempsey whose mere presence makes Sam jealous. But this boy has no time for such high school hijinks, as he soon discovers that the Decepticons have returned with another plan to take over our world. Before long, Sam soon finds himself fighting alongside other returning characters ,Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro plus one newcomer, Frances "Are you kidding me?" McDormand, as well as the Autobots: Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Ratchet, Ironhide, Sleepy, Bashful and Dopey.

Bay's fascistic tendencies aren't quite as pronounced as in the last installment though there is an appearance by Fox storm trooper Bill O'Reilly as himself, but there isn't anything this man won't do for the sake of arousing himself, be it an establishing shot of Carly that solely captures her 3D enhanced ass or a scene in which a little girl unknowingly plays tea party with a disguised Decepticon who then leaps up and murders her mom and dad. From start to finish, it's a miserable viewing experience, and the robot slugfests are once again incoherent and endless. So why is Dark of the Moon better than Revenge of the Fallen? Two reasons. First, there's an Inception like sequence right down to similar music involving a folded building that's pretty cool. And second, unlike its predecessor, there are no shots of Transformer testicles.